Why Swiss hotels hate Indians, the masala militants

Saul Bellow once wrote that luxury hotels allow no ‘opposing greatness’. Indeed, when guests take the elevator to their rooms, the event uncoils the pomp of ascension: liveried figures crunch into curtsies; Mozart is conscripted to provide momentous Muzak; and concern is administered like unction – "Was your time at the pool pleasurable, sir?"

The gravest form of insurrection against a hotel’s greatness, one learns, is spattered gravy. A recent New York Times story reveals that a Zurich newspaper had run an article in June (headlined ‘Into the luxury hotel with a gas cooker’) which reported that "…in some hotels an entire caste of guests is no longer desired: the Indians."

The Zurich paper recorded hotel managers’ accounts of the horrors visited upon their properties by the masala militants. Indians not only smuggle camping stoves into their rooms to cook curry, but also besmirch bathtubs with strange oils, the hotel managers said. They also wailed (decorously, one is sure) that Indians crushed all resistance by the weight of their numbers. Typically, an ambush-reservation is made; a room is booked for a couple, but the whole family of curry-eaters and tub-stainers shows up.

The Swiss are shocked that Indians cannot abide by the most honoured law of tourism – when in Rome, do as the Romans do. But that is not sensible advice because Romans were lousy guests. To avoid laundry bills, they enslaved the whole population of host nations. Romans’ network of zero-charge resorts was so extensive that they could travel for centuries without tipping a single waiter. When they did tip a waiter, it was usually into boiling oil.

Curiously, Romans always maintained that they never started a fight; they said every war they fought was provoked by the same needless outrage: somebody tugging at their togas. Romans’ disingenuousness made Edward Gibbon (the author of ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’) say, "The Romans had conquered the world in self defence".

So the Swiss must try another tactic. Of course, those who commiserate with them will snub the Indians. They will say that Indians are not only argumentative – as the well-known philosopher Amartya Sen has approvingly declared – but also barbaric, as Time magazine’s celebrated sociologist-lite, Joel Stein, has pointed out. If Stein runs into one of the millions of Indians who are looking for him, he is sure to catalyse the fusion of the two signal traits – argumentativeness and barbarism. But that is beside the point.

As for the Swiss, they have brought the masala militancy upon themselves. The current batch of Indians visiting Switzerland has been seduced by the temptation of a pilgrimage to the Alpine sites that Bollywood has used as shooting locales.

"Swiss tourism officials and their Indian counterparts are capitalizing on this obsession [Bollywood's Swiss connection]," the New York Times says. "The number of nights spent by Indian tourists, who come mostly in summer (few ski), has doubled in the last decade to 3,25,000, and the numbers continue to grow."

Exhilarated by the numbers, the tour operators have devised a package that offers Switzerland as a Bollywood-memorabilia hamper: "See that 1,000-year-old church? Your famous SRK has shot a scene there. That house? That’s where Stravinsky composed the Rite of Spring, but it will soon be famous because your Karan Johar is shooting a dance there next year."

After luring Indians with Bollywood, a form of entertainment in which condiments are the core ingredients, the Swiss want them to eat the expensive and bland fondue. That exposes shoddy homework. Can the Swiss name just one film with that famous SRK in which a substantial scene features the star alongside goat cheese? Indians love to imagine themselves supplanting their hero in a film’s crucial scenes. However, such moments call for light adventurism, like single-handedly destroying a platoon of enemy soldiers; and not foolhardy heroism, like trying unfamiliar cuisine.

Finally, the tub-staining accusation; it seems too trivial a complaint. Besides, it is ridiculous that a nation that crafts watches for astronauts cannot produce a tub that is resistant to linseed oil.

The Swiss ought to remember that an Indian – Dean Mahomed, from Patna – set up Britain’s first dedicated curry centre, Hindostanee Coffee House, in London in 1809. The serious business of the first war of Independence began 48 years later.

Indians take their curry seriously.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Kannan Somasundaram is an senior assistant editor at the Times of India in Ahmedabad. After graduating from New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia in 1994, he began his career in journalism as a film and book reviewer. The amorality and violence of modern cinema and literature prepared him well for subsequent stints with news desks dealing with Indian politics.

Kannan Somasundaram is an senior assistant editor at the Times of India in Ahmedabad. After graduating from New Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia in 1994, he b. . .